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Sunshine is usually unheard of in Milford Sound, but we somehow timed it perfectly (with the good weather luck from my Dad and Fran) and experienced the stunning fjord under the hot summer sun. When BJ and I had quickly visited Milford after a long hike a couple months ago it was pouring rain and thousands of tiny waterfalls lined the steep walls of the fjord. Under the sun, the temporary waterfalls had disappeared. It just so happens that you can’t have the best of both worlds in Milford Sound. When the sun is shining there will never be as many waterfalls and when there are a thousand waterfalls there will never be sun.

We started out our tour of Milford Sound with a day in Te Anau. We checked in to another Holiday Park, went on a self guided tour of a small bird sanctuary, and then spent a few hours reading and writing on the grassy lawn in front of the holiday park. While I was writing this blog on paper, BJ took a sip of beer and then sprayed it all over me and my paper. I thought it was a joke at first until he said that a bee had slipped into his beer and stung him on his lip. It had started to puff up pretty quickly. Later in the day we went to the local cinema to watch a film on the area called “Shadowland.” BJ noticed that one of the local beers that they were selling was called Wasp. He thought it was very fitting. Unlike the horrible film we saw in Franz Joseph, this film was beautifully done. Some of the scenery and accompanying music even gave me goosebumps.

It’s hard to describe the insignificance and smallness one feels in Milford and the photos will never do the area justice. But I can say that it is one of, if not “the” most beautiful places in New Zealand. We toured Milford on a small “nature cruise” boat which was able to get closer to the shoreline than some of the larger cruises. They taught us a few things as well . . . Milford Sound is actually a fjord and not a sound at all. It was incorrectly named by Captain Cook and the name stuck. A fjord is an area that has been carved out by glaciers and filled in with sea water and usually has very steep and dramatic mountains that jut up from the ocean. A sound is a flooded river valley . . . think of Puget Sound in the Northwest. We also learned that Milford Sound has many “treevalanches.” There is so little topsoil on the massive rock mountains that the trees either cling on to cracks within the rock or they grow on top of one another. If one tree comes loose from the rock, an entire string of trees below it will come crashing down with it, grabbing on to more and more trees as it slides down to sea level.

Probably the highlight of our boat cruise in the Milford was our experience under the Lady Bowen Waterfall. After the captain advised everyone who didn’t want to get wet to go inside, the boat slowly inched toward the base of the falls, which plunge into the fjord from over 500 feet above. The boat dipped its nose directly into the waterfall and BJ and I, although somewhat hiding below the bow, were instantly soaked.

On the return back to the boat dock, we had the option of stopping at an observatory called Milford Deep. Milford receives about 8 meters of rain a year which creates a fresh water layer over the salt water. Unlike the muddy rain water that you would see during a typical rain storm, there is no mud for the rain water to pick up. The rain water turns a little bit darker in color from tannins but is not murky. The fresh water layer that ends up above the salt water shields enough of the sunlight that fish and sea creatures like black coral, eleven-armed starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers that would normally live much deeper in the ocean can live closer to the surface of the ocean. Obviously, this was a beautiful and yet very informational tour of Milford Sound.